Transport of commuters

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32459, 20 November 1970, Page 2

Transport of commuters

The resultant fall-off in patronage at each fare-rise opened the whole question of whether public transport should be a trading enterprise or a social service, said the general manager of the Christchurch Transport Board (Mr J. F. Fardell) yesterday.

Addressing the annual conference of the Institute of Transport, he said he was more than convinced after long experience in profitable and non-profit-able operations, that public transport must be considered a social service along with hospitals, police, traffic-control, and water and sewerage services. The reason for this thinking was the vast amount of money spent on reading and traffic-control to move vehicles two or three hours a day. The money spent in this direction was out of all proportion to the advantages gained, Mr Fardell said. The emphasis today was wrongly placed in that the efforts of traffic engineers and planners were geared to the movement of vehicles rather than goods and people. "Our thinking must be re orientated to the mass movement of people, for by doing so we can alleviate the growing pressures on our street net-

works, and at the same time avoid vast sums of money being spent to move vehicles freely for two or three hours a day,” he said.

“By far the biggest cause of street congestion at peaktraffic times is the commuter who uses his motor-car—if this class of person can be returned to public transport then street congestion can be considerably relieved," said Mr Fardell.

Public transport had no peer in commuting—and every commuter should be encouraged to use such transport. Operators should receive financial assistance from national sources by being relieved from all forms of taxation so that frequent high-level commuter services could be provided. “A return to the use of this type of service will preserve our city centres, environment, and air from increasing pollution,” said Mr Fardell. “The cost of providing this would be considerably less than provision of new reading and complex traffic control systems simply to move the same people to their work destinations.

“If public transport is to play a greater part in the commuter role, then transportation systems will be under pressure to improve their general operating efficiency and overall speeds,” he said. “This must be done if they are to continue operating in our cities.” One of the main reasons why public transport had lost its market was the inability of some of the present systems to provide a service which matched the motor-car in speed, availability, and dependability. The most important factor for the traveller was the trip time of the journey. “The motor-car now sets the standard—and the transport system which has the least walking, waiting, an,d interchange time will in the most cases have the fastest door-to-door time and be the one most competitive with the motor-car,” Mr Fardell said. A reduction in trip-time must be the aim of all operators if present passengers were to be retained and new ones captured. This raised the question of the mode of transport to be used to meet varying demands.